United States v. William Wallace
Opinion
The court having been polled at the request of one of its members, and a majority of the judges who are in regular active service and not disqualified not having voted in favor ( Fed. R. App. P. 35 and 5th Cir. R. 35 ), the petition for rehearing en banc is DENIED .
In the en banc poll, 7 judges voted in favor of rehearing (Judges Smith, Dennis, Prado, Owen, Elrod, Graves, and Willett), and 8 judges voted against rehearing (Chief Judge Stewart and Judges Jones, Clement, Southwick, Haynes, Higginson, Costa, and Ho).
JAMES L. DENNIS, Circuit Judge, joined by JAMES E. GRAVES, Circuit Judge, dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc:
Defendant William Wallace contends that the Government violated the Fourth Amendment by ordering his service provider to activate his phone's "Enhanced 911" capability
1
and to relay his GPS coordinates in real time, including while he was in his home. The panel opinion concludes that, even if the Government's real-time tracking of Wallace's GPS coordinates was an unconstitutional search, Wallace cannot benefit from the exclusionary rule suppression of the fruits of that search because law-enforcement officials could have reasonably relied on open-ended language in
In
United States v. Leon
,
The good-faith exception announced in
Krull
is clearly inapposite here. As an initial matter, there is no similar legislative judgment as to the constitutionality of the officers' actions in this case. The statute at issue in
Krull
authorized warrantless administrative inspections of a regulated business.
See
no evidence suggesting that ... legislatures have enacted a significant number of statutes permitting warrantless administrative searches violative of the Fourth Amendment. Legislatures generally have confined their efforts to authorizing administrative searches of specific categories of businesses that require regulation, and the resulting statutes usually have been held to be constitutional.
Unlike in
Krull
, here there is no legislative judgment or dialogue between the courts and the legislature as to the constitutionality of the real-time GPS surveillance at issue. Congress passed the SCA over thirty years ago.
See
Elec. Commc'ns Privacy Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-508,
Moreover, as has been expressed by five members of the current Supreme Court
*317
and by members of this court, there is grave doubt as to the constitutionality of the kind of warrantless, real-time GPS tracking at issue in this case.
See, e.g.
,
United States v. Jones
,
Equally troubling, unlike the statute at issue in
Krull
, which reasonably appeared to authorize warrantless administrative searches, the SCA does not reasonably appear to authorize real-time GPS tracking. The statute at issue in
Krull
required parties licensed to sell vehicles or vehicle parts to permit officials to inspect records pertaining to the purchase and sale of vehicles and parts "and to allow 'examination of the premises of the licensee's established place of business for the purpose of determining the accuracy of required records.' "
This holding ignores plain language in the SCA suggesting that real-time collection of GPS tracking information is not authorized by this statute. Section 2703(c) is part of the " Stored Communications Act." (emphasis added). The pertinent section is entitled " Records concerning electronic communication service or remote computing service." § 2703(c) (emphasis added). GPS coordinates that have not yet been created and would not be created absent the Government's intervention cannot be called "records" or "stored" communications under any commonsense understanding of those terms. Moreover, at the time of the surveillance in this case, a majority of courts 2 along with numerous *318 legal scholars 3 had observed that the SCA does not permit the Government to order the creation or collection of real-time location information. Against this backdrop, the panel opinion's proposed interpretation of the SCA is not objectively reasonable.
To make up for the lack of textual and precedential support for its proffered reading of the SCA, the panel falls back on extraneous factors to conclude that the officer's reliance was reasonable, relying on the officers' consultation with an assistant district attorney. But
Krull
allows officers to defer to a
legislature's
constitutional judgment, not a prosecutor's. Much more so than legislators and neutral magistrates, prosecutors are "adjuncts to the law enforcement team."
See
Krull
,
It is some comfort that, after two revisions, the panel has eliminated several pernicious aspects of its previous opinions. However, the panel's latest revision still misses the mark. It also misses the opportunity to provide sorely needed guidance on the meaning of a complicated and poorly understood statute. Indeed, I am afraid the majority's opinion aggravates rather than alleviates the confusion. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.
Enhanced 911 (E911) refers to wireless service providers' ability to accurately determine the location of customers who call 911. Federal law requires service providers to incorporate E911 capabilities to facilitate rescue and emergency assistance.
See
Enhanced 911 Emergency Calling Systems, 61 FED. REG. 40,374 (proposed Aug. 2, 1996) (codified at
See, e.g
.,
In re Application of U.S. for an Order Authorizing Disclosure of Location Based Servs.
, No. H-07-606M,
See, e.g.
, Deirdre K. Mulligan,
Reasonable Expectations in Electronic Communications: A Critical Perspective on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee v. William Chance WALLACE, Defendant-Appellant
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published